The Generals

by W. E. B Griffin

  He went to the PX and bought two suitcases, packed them, and then finally went to the O Club for several medicinal beers and another steak. Twenty-two hours later, he boarded a Northwest Orient Airlines airplane for San Francisco.

  There were stewardesses aboard, lovely young women who smelled of erotic perfume and the swell of whose breasts were delightfully apparent as they served meals and otherwise made themselves hospitable. He could now afford to think again of Ursula in ways he had been wise not to do at Foo Two. He was headed at six hundred miles per hour for the sanctioned joys of connubial congress. He was married to the best-looking woman in the world, and three minutes after he got home, he intended to be fucking her eyeballs off.

  It didn’t go quite the way he envisioned over the Pacific, and later aboard TWA 105 from San Francisco to Idlewild, nor in the cab from Idlewild to the apartment of his parents on upper Park Avenue, where Ursula should be waiting for him.

  For one thing, there was a new doorman. O’Hara was gone. The ruddy-faced, whiskey-nosed Irishman had been the daytime guardian of the portals for as long as Geoff could remember. A Latin-American of some species, with a pencil line mustache, had taken over O’Hara’s post—and his overcoat, too, to judge by the way it fit him.

  He could not, he said, permit Geoff to go upstairs without being announced. He seemed to relent, after Geoff showed him both his I.D. card and the key to the apartment, which he had carried all through Vietnam on his dog tag chain. But as Geoff got on the elevator (the elevator operator was new, too, this one an Afro-American gentleman with what looked like twenty pounds of hair) Geoff saw the doorman working the telephone switchboard.

  Neither Ursula nor the housekeeper opened the door. The butler did.

  “Welcome home, Mr. Geoff,” Finley said, formally, and then abandoned butler protocol and embraced his employer’s son in a bear hug.

  Which somewhat dismayed Geoff. It was not that he was not glad to see Finley, for whom his affection was deep and lifelong, but Finley was supposed to be in the house in Palm Beach with his mother. If Finley was here, his mother was here, and that was going to interfere with his plans for connubial congress.

  “Oh, my God!” his mother wailed as she appeared. “What have they done to you? You’re as thin as a rail!”

  It was five minutes before he learned that Ursula wasn’t even in the apartment. She was living in Greenwich Village, his mother told him.

  “No,” his mother said somewhat tartly when she saw Geoff’s look, “I have not lost my mind. It wasn’t my idea that Ursula should live down there. I was of course opposed to the whole idea. But she was aided and abetted in the notion by your cousin Craig, who, as you know, owns an apartment there. And so she left because she ‘felt bored to death by life on Park Avenue.’”

  “Do you have a key?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. I try to drop in on her from time to time, so she gave me this one in case she wasn’t at home.”

  He could have walked down Fifth Avenue, he thought, considerably faster than the cab carried him.

  Washington Mews, all of which the family (or perhaps Cousin Craig personally) owned, was a double row of old houses on either side of a private, cobblestone street just north of Washington Square. When he stepped over the chain barring access to the street, he realized he had no idea which of the houses he was looking for.

  He finally found a red-painted door to which a shiny cast-brass plaque reading LOWELL was bolted. The key fit the door, and he pushed it inward.

  “Ursula!” he called.

  There was no answer. He walked through the house. It was elegantly furnished. Obviously, Craig and his dead wife Ilse’s furniture. There was a picture of the dead woman holding a new baby, with a very proud-looking second Lieutenant Craig W. Lowell beaming, in a silver frame on a table.

  He went through the entire house, even down into the basement. In the bathroom of the master bedroom he found two pairs of white underpants and two brassieres hanging on a steam-heated towel rack. He found this highly erotic.

  “Where the hell is she?” he asked, aloud.

  He would, he thought, keep calm and collected, have a drink, and Ursula, who was probably shopping, would come home while he was drinking.

  There had been a bar in the basement, a real bar with stools and a sink and coolers and a large assortment of bottles, and there was a portable bar in the living room mounted on huge wheels. He went to it, poured Scotch in a glass, and just because it was there, not because he expected that there would be ice in it, raised the lid of a silver ice bucket.

  There turned out to be a few nearly melted ice cubes inside, and as he dropped them in his glass and added water, he was curious about them. Ursula’s drinking was generally limited to a glass of wine. To whom had she been feeding booze?

  He forced the question from his mind, then took his whiskey and sat down in a stainless-steel-and-leather chair facing a wall-mounted television. There was a cigar box on the table. It certainly would not contain cigars, but what the hell, have a look.

  It was full of cigars. Big black cigars. Fresh big black cigars.

  Cousin Craig was obviously spending time here.

  He assured himself that he had a despicably suspicious mind.

  He took one of the cigars and lit it.

  He assured himself again that he had a despicably suspicious mind. While Cousin Craig had an Army-wide—not to mention family—reputation for fucking any female over fifteen who could be induced to hold still for thirty seconds, he certainly would draw the line at Ursula.

  On the other hand, why was he being so nice to her?

  He looked at the match box in his hand.

  GASTHAUS BAVARIA 21 WEST THIRD STREET GREENWICH VILLAGE

  The matches, at least, were Ursula’s. He doubted that Cousin Craig would spend much time in a Bavarian Gasthaus on West Third Street.

  That was why she was in the Village. Of course she was bored with life in the uptown apartment. For a wild time, she could look down from the garden at the cars going up and down Park Avenue, and top that off with a quick trip to Gristede’s Grocery Store.

  Was it possible that she was at the Gasthaus Bavaria now? And if he went to look, wouldn’t she walk in the door two minutes after he walked out?

  What the hell, it was only a couple of blocks away, just the other side of Washington Square. It wouldn’t hurt to look.

  As he crossed Washington Square, an extraordinary thing happened. Someone sitting on one of the benches, he wasn’t sure who, hissed “Baby killer!” at him.

  He wondered what the hell that was all about.

  There was a knot of people at the covered entrance to Gasthaus Bavaria.

  With a clear conscience—he wasn’t after a table, just looking to see if Ursula was there—he shouldered his way through.

  He got as far as the velvet rope before being challenged.

  “This isn’t the Army, Lieutenant,” a man hissed at him. “You have to wait in line like everyone else.”

  Geoff ignored him and looked around Gasthaus Bavaria. There was even an ooom-pah band. The waiters were in lederhosen.

  “Did you hear what I said, Lieutenant?” the man said, petulantly, tugging at Geoff’s sleeve.

  Geoff looked at him.

  “Fuck you,” he said, clearly and distinctly.

  He spoke loud enough for his voice to carry around the room. Heads turned, including that of the hostess, who was attired in Bavarian costume, with a white blouse and a pleated skirt and knee-high woolen stockings. She even had her hair done up in a bun. When she located the source of the obscenity, she dropped her menus and ran across the room, crying, “Liebchen! Oh, Liebchen! Meine Liebchen!”

  Geoff thought Ursula looked really terrible in her Bavarian costume and hair in a tight bun. It didn’t really matter, for ten minutes after he first saw her in it, he had her hair down, and Ursula was wearing her birthday suit.

  (Two)

  Ursula was tracing wi
th the balls of her fingers the small white scars on his left leg (Purple Heart #2) and upper right chest (Purple Heart #3), when the door chimes sounded.

  “If that’s my mother,” Geoff announced, “I’ll pour boiling oil on her.”

  “You’re terrible,” she said, and jumped out of bed and went to the window, adjusted the Venetian blinds, and looked down.

  Those boobs are absolutely perfect. And the tail ain’t half bad either, Geoff thought.

  “It’s Mary and Luther,” Ursula announced.

  “OK, pour boiling oil on Mary and Luther, whoever the hell they are.”

  “They’ve brought us a present,” Ursula said. She opened the window a crack and bent over it, which Geoff thought to be a remarkably erotic act, and called, “Just a minute.”

  She straightened and said, “Ach, Gott, we’re not dressed.”

  “You noticed,” he said.

  “Get a robe from Craig’s room,” she said. “He wouldn’t mind. Last room on the left.”

  He was a little disturbed that Cousin Craig was indeed living here, and considerably surprised at what he found in Cousin Craig’s room. There was a large safe, a desk, a typewriter, dictating equipment, and three telephones.

  In the closet were both uniforms and civilian clothing, and two filing cabinets. And of course, the robe Ursula had talked about.

  He put on a silk dressing gown that looked like it had belonged to John Barrymore in Hollywood in 1930. Then he saw the monogram, and realized he hadn’t been far off. The initials were those of Craig Lowell’s father, who had died before Geoff was born.

  Then he found slippers and went downstairs to meet Luther and Mary.

  Luther and Mary had brought them a cake that looked to be one thousand calories to the bite and two bottles of white wine. Luther and Mary, he quickly found out, were the proprietors of Gasthaus Bavaria. They were, like Ursula, East Germans who had gotten out across the wall.

  “Ven I zed, ‘Gasthaus Pomerania,’” Luther said, “people zed it zounded as if it vas for dogs.”

  Mary had overheard Ursula speaking German at a vegetable stand and introduced herself. One thing led to another and Ursula became the hostess (and sometimes cashier) of Gasthaus Bavaria.

  “So ven vee heard you vas over dere, and her brudder vas in Berlin, we sort of keep an eye on her, and den, like it says in duh Bible, casting bread on duh vater, ven Ursula tells de Herr Oberst dat duh landlort’s giffing us drubble about duh lease, duh Herr Oberst knows zumbody, and fixes it.”

  The translation of that was that when the Herr Oberst, Mr. Colonel, Cousin Craig heard from Ursula that the people who had been so nice to her were having trouble with their landlord he had done something about it. Geoff didn’t think that it had posed many problems for Mr. Colonel. He was almost positive that the family (in other words, either Geoff’s father or Cousin Craig) owned that entire block of West Third Street. The Craig family had held large portions of that part of Manhattan Island since they had brought it from the Dutch. And the one unbent rule of the family was that once real estate was acquired it was never sold.

  The next visitor (this place is like Grand Central Station, Geoff thought with annoyance) was a portly mustachioed man in a well-tailored suit smoking a foul-smelling pipe and carrying a briefcase.

  “Major Brockhammer,” Ursula announced proudly, “this is my husband.”

  “Welcome home, Lieutenant,” Brockhammer announced. “Colonel Lowell’s told me what a hell of a job you did over there.”

  “May we offer you a drink, Major?” Geoff asked.

  “I’d love one, but I can’t,” Brockhammer said. “I sneaked in here without a copilot, and that’s bad enough. I’ll just drop this off and head back to Benning.”

  Without asking permission, he went upstairs, was gone three minutes, and came back without the briefcase.

  “Ursula,” he said. “The alarm is on.”

  “What alarm?” Geoff asked.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Ursula said. “Just don’t go in Craig’s bedroom.”

  “Nice to have met you, Lieutenant,” Brockhammer said, and was gone.

  Herr Oberst arrived thirty minutes later, as Mary and Luther were finally leaving. He was wearing a flower-patterned sports coat and wide-brimmed straw hat. And carrying a briefcase.

  There weren’t very many people who could get away with wearing the coat and the hat, Geoff thought, but Cousin Craig carried it off splendidly.

  Geoff got a handshake, and then an impulsive hug.

  “Since he’s wearing my robe,” Lowell said, “I gather Brockhammer has not yet arrived?”

  “He was here,” Ursula said, “half an hour ago. The alarm is on.”

  “What the hell is this alarm?” Geoff asked.

  “I’ll have to leave this overnight,” Lowell said, gesturing with the briefcase. “I don’t know what else to do with it. And I’ll have to come back early in the morning, I’m afraid.”

  “Come back from where?” Ursula asked.

  “If all else fails, I can stay at his father’s apartment,” Lowell said.

  “Why?” she asked. “Don’t be silly.”

  He’s not being silly, Geoff thought. He is being a perfect gentleman.

  “How thick are the walls?” Craig Lowell said, immediately disabusing the perfect gentleman notion.

  Ursula blushed. “Thick enough,” she said, softly.

  “Don’t be silly,” Geoff heard himself saying. “Stay here.”

  “I thought you might never ask,” Craig Lowell said. “I accept. I will plug my ears if that would make you more comfortable. But I really have work to do, and you weren’t expected until tomorrow.”

  “You knew I was coming?” Geoff asked. Lowell nodded.

  “You didn’t say anything to me,” Ursula accused.

  “He wanted to surprise you,” Lowell said.

  “He surprised me all right,” Ursula said. “He walked in the Gasthaus and said a dirty word at the top of his lungs.”

  “Did you really?” Lowell asked, amused.

  “What’s with the alarm?” Geoff asked. “I keep asking and you keep ignoring me.”

  “There’s some classified material, from time to time, in a safe upstairs. The room and the safe are wired to a burglar alarm. I set off the room alarm by mistake one time, and there were three cops here with sirens screaming in two minutes. I’ve been tempted to set off the safe alarm, just to see what would happen. We’d probably get the National Guard.”

  “What kind of classified material?” Geoff asked.

  Lowell looked at him for a moment before replying.

  “Right now, the plans for an air assault division,” he said.

  “A division?” Geoff asked.

  Lowell nodded.

  “That is classified, obviously, Lieutenant Craig,” Lowell said. “And I didn’t tell you.”

  “What’s it doing here?”

  “For four days a week, I am a devoted student of Basket-weaving I, Organized Grab Ass II, and other such subjects. On Thursday night, I fly down here from Vermont and work, on the QT, for the Army. Sunday night, I take it to Washington, and turn it over to somebody who carries it to Benning.”

  “Before Major Parker went down,” Geoff said, “he told me what they were doing to you. Why don’t you just tell them to go fuck themselves?”

  “Geoff!” Ursula protested the language.

  Lowell met Geoff’s eyes. “And do what, Geoff? Go to work with your father?”

  “Why not? Just as soon as I can resign, that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “I think you will find as many horse’s asses in the employ of Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes as you have found in the Army,” Lowell said.

  “The pay will be a little better,” Geoff snapped.

  “That argument won’t wash for you, Geoff,” Lowell said. “You can’t spend the money you already have. And you don’t even have all of it yet.”

  “People won’t be shooting at
me on Wall Street,” Geoff went on, sensing he was losing the argument.

  “You may wish that somebody was,” Lowell said. “When the great excitement of the day is deciding whether to eat the Dover sole at the Luncheon Club, the Executive Dining Room, or Fraunces Tavern.”

  “Dover sole is a hell of a better meal than what I have been eating for a year,” Geoff said.

  “Touché,” Lowell said. “I turn over my king, sir.”

  He was not turning over his king at all, Geoff thought, with mingled anger and embarrassment. Cousin Craig had decided not to fight with him, either because he didn’t want the argument to get out of hand, or because he had decided there was no point in arguing with a fool.

  “I will now put on my Dutch uncle hat,” Lowell said. “You will have to restrain your lust for several hours. Your father is too much of a gentleman to come busting in here without an invitation, and whatever it costs him, he will restrain your mother from doing the same. You can’t do that to him, Geoff. Get on the phone and take your father and mother to dinner. Take them to the Harvard Club, why don’t you? Let your father show you and your medals off. He’s entitled.”

  “I don’t belong to the Harvard Club,” Geoff said.

  “I do,” Lowell said. “I’ll call and make reservations.”

  “You’ll come with us,” Ursula said, deciding the argument.

  “No, thank you,” Lowell said. “For one thing, I shouldn’t be there, and for another, I fortunately have the argument presented by this briefcase and the one in the safe for an excuse.”

  (Three)

  Geoff’s body cloak was out of synch. He had come halfway around the world in just a few hours. So he was wide awake at five-thirty. He raised himself on his elbow and examined his wife in the faint light of the bedside clock-radio. He debated and decided against seeing if he could wake her up. She was sleeping like a child.